Their willingness to have fun and make a real effort made for a rather entertaining 90 minutes. And more than that, they each had personal connections to drag and/or queer people that led to some emotional moments.

To some, it may sound like a ploy to get a few cheap laughs from famous people getting into drag for the first time. However, as drag mentors, Trixie Mattel and Monét X Change explain, Secret Celebrity Drag Race is so much more.

“Obviously they’re there to promote themselves and because they’re fans of drag race. But they’re also there because they had something about the way they look or the way they’ve been viewed as a performer or their gender or their sexuality or their body type, there’s something in drag they wanted to use to walk through that fire,” Trixie says. “It’s actually surprisingly moving. I thought we were just going to kiki, but once again on Drag Race, Trixie Mattel gets tricked into crying.”

“The heart of this show,” Monét adds, “is showing you that no matter how big your star is, there’s something about putting on a wig and a frock for the first time that makes you access parts of your personality that you did not know that were there.”